During a recent weekend trip in Chicago, I heard the tell-tale drumbeat of helicopter rotors early on a Saturday morning. It was not entirely out of the ordinary, though, since helicopters fly tours around the city and each of the news stations has a chopper, as well. Still, the sound seemed different in some way that I couldn’t place until I saw the yellow, round of a former military helicopter lifting straight up over Michigan Avenue. Like any good writer, I promptly forgot about it until some random trigger told me to see if any more-enterprising human being had shot video of the classic chopper doing work.
It turns out a few have and that the helicopter is a Sikorsky S-58JT, which operated in various branches of the military as the H-34. It was a workhorse, pulling off everything from anti-submarine warfare to executive transport and when their lifespan had run is course, they pulled civilian duty. At least one served in commercial passenger transport in New York City in the 1980s, but this yellow-and-white one, registered N129NH, belongs to Midwest Helicopter near Chicago.
This particular chopper was built in 1958, meaning it’s near the end of its sixth decade of service. When the job description includes heavy lifting of HVAC units onto apartment buildings, that’s a tough body of work to compete with. This video is pretty good, but it just doesn’t capture the clenching intensity of watching a tough old piston-engine helicopter working in the concrete canyons of a major city’s downtown. While most of the buildings lining Michigan Avenue are offices, there are certainly enough hotels and high-rises around the loop that their dwellers can sip their morning coffee and watch a truly precise helicopter pilot ply his trade at eye level.
From the size of the exhaust and the reshaped cowl, it looks like it was converted to turbine power. Great video.
That is one of the jet turbine converted S58’s hence the JT designation after the
S58. I was at the Sikorsky Bridgeport Connecticut facility when they were doing the conversions in the late 70’s early 80’s!
Glad to see some are still in use.
KK
See, I don’t know much about helicopters so I’m glad you guys can spot these things. Airliners? I got those, but helicopters are a different world. Totally amazing to see these guys do some work, though.
In the UK this was called the Westland Wessex and also was turbine-powered in later versions. If the USA was ruled by the health and safety obsessed nanny state like we are they would have evacuated the entire city of Chicago for 3 days….
Oh were catching up to you Brits, and with one more socialist administration we will have passed you.
Airassault! The windshear from those buildings must be nutty.
Safer than a crane for the same job, hands down. Much more fun to watch, too.